


ice diamonds

by sunbrights



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gambler/Yakuza AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: It’s meant to be a notification, to keep her apprised of progress. She’s not meant to reply.She sets her phone flat on the bar and takes another pull of her drink.





	ice diamonds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewildwilds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewildwilds/gifts).



> Inspired by [this](http://thewildwilds.tumblr.com/post/168272386962/designed-an-alternate-design-for-peko-for-my) lovely art for [this](http://thewildwilds.tumblr.com/tagged/gambler%2Fyakuza+au/chrono) lovely AU; if you haven't checked out the Gambler/Yakuza AU courtesy @thewildwilds, I 100% recommend you do!

She picks her favorite dive to oversee from: a skinny, crowded place on the west side of the city. Its peak Friday business hours dovetail neatly with her timeline, and it's tucked into an alley only four blocks away, out of view from the main road. The clientele is diverse enough to allow them to blend in, but savvy enough to know to give her berth when necessary.

Genji doesn't like the idea of her being so close. Not with a wildcard like this in play, he says, so seriously that he can't possibly intend the pun.

She goes anyway. It's been weeks, after all, and the whisky selection is to die for.

Matsuoka is on shift tonight; he beams at her from behind the bar as soon as she steps through the door. “Is that Pekoyama-san?” he says, just loudly enough to raise the appropriate heads and just jovially enough not to alarm the rest. She’s always appreciated him. “What’ll it be?”

“The Hibiki today,” she says, hanging her purse off the hook below the bar. “Thank you.”

“Coming right up.”

Matsuoka is an artist with the ice. He holds it bare-handed and carves it with a short, flat knife, until it’s all clear angles and glittering edges. He spins it into a glass, pours a generous two fingers over the top, and sets the drink in front of her. It shines with refracted light and rich, dark color.

It’s mostly for show. It’s a reason for her to be here, at this bar, at this time. She breathes it in, oaky and floral, and lets that by itself calm her nerves.

“Been a while since we saw you last,” Matsuoka says, drying his hands on a clean dish towel. “Started to get worried this neighborhood was on the up-and-up.”

“Business,” she answers. “You know how things are.”

He winks at her, and leaves her be.

She waits. Genji and the others trickle in over the next twenty minutes or so, and take scattered seats around the room. They do a decent job of not making themselves conspicuous, casually dressed and striking up conversations with civilians, but that doesn't make it any less overbearing. He's brought three more bodies than she asked.

It's too late for there to be anything done about it, though. She holds her phone in her lap and watches the stream of people flow in and out the door: older gentlemen and young couples and packs of laughing women. She allows herself a single sip of her drink; it’s early, but the whisky is too good to let dilute.

Her phone buzzes in her palm, almost fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.

 **+81-9059529861**  
(21:47)  
All done  
(21:47)  
Told you I didn’t need that much time

It’s meant to be a notification, to keep her apprised of progress. She’s not meant to reply.

She sets her phone flat on the bar and takes another pull of her drink.

(21:47)  
Checking your ego wasn’t the point of the timeline.

(21:47)  
Yeah, but it kinda was, wasn’t it?  
(21:48)  
I can keep going if you want. I’m on a roll

She suppresses the urge to roll her eyes, but only just. This batch of the Hibiki has particularly strong notes of plum, and she takes a moment to appreciate them.

(21:48)  
No.

(21:48)  
You're the boss, princess  
(21:48)  
Just so we’re clear, though, you're the one leaving money on the table here, not me

(21:49)  
I'm clear on what we agreed the plan was.  
(21:49)  
Are you?

She waits. Minutes drag with no response.

It's uncharacteristic.

Peak begins to pass. The crowd is still dense enough for her purposes, but there are more people leaving now than arriving. Genji and the others have to mingle and redistribute, to accommodate the ratio shift. Each time the door opens, it brings in a gust of cold air with it, tickling her wrists and ankles. 

She waits, but her phone is silent until the next check-in.

 **Soseki**  
(22:03)  
Cargo’s here but the guy ghosted  
(22:03)  
You want us to track him down?

Her jaw aches with tension. Cold air from the door flapping open and closed makes it worse.

 _This_ was the point of her timeline. She scrolls back through her text history to find the approximate time he fell off the radar, and draws a radius in her head of his possible locations. Soseki can fan east and she and Genji can split west and south—

“Sorry, sir,” Matsuoka says to her right, “going to need to ask you to take off your hat inside.”

“Sure,” comes the answer, before she's had a chance to process the pulse of adrenaline that zips through her, a thrill like static electricity. “Sorry about that.”

Kuzuryuu tips his trilby off his head and lays it casually on the bar, not two feet from her glass. 

She presses her fingers against the blooming spot of pain just above her left eye. 

Genji is trying to get her attention; he sinks down in his chair, arms spread wide over the back, jaw jumping. She ignores him, and taps out her reply to Soseki, one-handed.

(22:04)  
Don’t bother. I have eyes on him.  
(22:05)  
Just take what we came for. I’ll handle the rest.

(22:05)  
Yes ma’am

The phone vibrates again, and a second message slides in beneath the first.

 **+81-9059529861**  
(22:05)  
Talking about me?  
(22:05)  
You look pissed

She curls her hand around her glass, and tilts her head enough to let him into her peripheral vision. He’s taken a stool at the far end of the bar, draped his coat on the stool beside him, and is making inane small talk with Matsuoka.

The best course of action is to ignore him. It’s safest, for all of them, in the inevitability that he drew retaliatory eyes with him. There’s no reason for her to get caught up in his irresponsibility.

She lays her phone in her lap and types with her thumb, beneath the bar.

(22:06)  
Was that your goal?

“What can I get you, friend?”

Matsuoka seems charmed. By what, she can’t fathom. Kuzuryuu squints up at the draft list— and then his eyes slide abruptly left, straight at her.

Her phone buzzes. She can’t see his other hand, she realizes.

“I’ll have one of whatever the lady’s having,” he says, smile wide.

She refuses to rise to his bait. To anyone watching who matters, it’s not evidence of anything. It’s barely even memorable, just a harmless overture from a stranger. It certainly isn’t anything to work herself up about.

But Matsuoka has known her too long; he looks down at her, an interested light behind his eyes, and leans both elbows on the bar. 

“Friend of yours, Pekoyama-san?”

She can feel Kuzuryuu’s expectant look on the side of her face. She takes a sip of her drink, and it burns on her tongue, bright and smooth.

“That depends,” she muses, swirling the glass. “Are you friends with the flies that hover around your dinner?”

Matsuoka booms with laughter. Kuzuryuu claps a dramatic hand over his heart.

“Best move on from that one, my friend,” Matsuoka tells him, tipping ice into a cocktail shaker. “Pekoyama-san is a cold, cold woman.”

“Little late for that warning, doncha think?”

“Eh, everyone needs a laugh sometimes.”

She tunes their banter out, and lowers her eyes.

(22:06)  
A man can’t have a drink every now and then?

(22:09)  
You’ve picked easily the most troublesome place to have it in. For me and for you.

He’s good, she’ll give him that. She only notices the flicker of his eyes and the shift in his shoulders because she’s looking for them; each motion slides effortlessly behind something else, full-bodied sleight-of-hand.

(22:10)  
What can I say? I was on a roll. No point in letting it go to waste

(22:10)  
And what do you think your odds are of this ending well for you?

“Are you sure you won’t reconsider, Pekoyama-san?” Matsuoka asks her. Kuzuryuu has foregone the Hibiki 12 year; Matsuoka pours him an ale from the tap. “I like this one.”

Her phone buzzes. “Hey, hey,” Kuzuryuu says. “I appreciate the solidarity, but the lady’s made her decision. Don’t make me out like a creep.”

“Believe me,” Matsuoka laughs, “Pekoyama-san doesn’t have anything to worry about from a skinny thing like you.”

(22:11)  
You tell me

The back of her neck prickles. Her heart pounds. She feels like she could turn her palm over and find her sword already there, battle-ready.

She swallows the last of her drink. It leaves only the ice behind, just beginning to melt, cold against her lips.

Then she tucks her phone back into her purse.

Kuzuryuu looks at her, which would be fine, except for how his eyes hang on her fingertips when she snaps the mouth of her purse closed again. It’s a mistake, if a brief one.

Matsuoka clears away her empty glass. “Another?”

She considers. A mistake, maybe. 

Or, perhaps, a risk.

“Please.”

He carves the ice. It’s beautiful, flat and flawless, as clear as an open window. He spins it into a new glass, and pours the whisky over top.

She waves it away, when he tries to hand it to her. She snaps open her wallet and lays bills on the bar, enough to cover the drinks and Matsuoka both. “For the gentleman with the hat,” she says, setting both feet on the floor. “That half-price beer is a travesty.”

Matsuoka does as she asks, laughing his belly laugh. “I tried to warn you,” he tells Kuzuryuu, as she passes. “Like ice. You would’ve done better to find another girl in another bar.”

She can see Kuzuryuu watching her, in the bar’s front window. He draws his thumb around the edge of the glass and answers, “Where’s the fun in that?”

She lets the door clatter shut behind her.

*

“I always thought it was a shitty comparison,” he tells her later, one day when the odds are much lower, the stakes are much higher, and his smile steals into the curve of her neck. “Not much else burns like you do.”


End file.
